When we are asleep and have a nightmare, we can’t reason our way out; we have to wake up.

Gita wisdom explains that we are souls with an innate capacity for spiritual perception, a capacity presently latent due to our infatuation with materialistic things. Thus we are in a state of spiritual slumber.

The Bhagavad-gita (09.02) indicates that its message can offer us direct realization of the Absolute Truth (pratyakshavagamam). This realization is much like waking up from slumber and opening our eyes to see what was always there. We can’t reason our way out of this slumber – we have to wake up from it.

How do we wake up?

By bhakti-yoga.

Our perception is shaped by our desires – when we desire material things, our perception gets locked in matter; when we desire spiritual truth, ultimately Krishna, our perception becomes expanded to perceive spirit. Bhakti-yoga purifies our desires and redirects them from matter to spirit, thereby reviving our spiritual perception. Just as a sleeping person can be awakened by sound, so can the sleeping soul be awakened by spiritual sounds – sounds centered on the supreme spiritual truth, Krishna.

This transformational facility offered by bhakti-yoga transcends our rational faculty while also using it optimally. The Gita urges us to rationally understand the inevitable miseries of material existence (13.09), thereby recognizing it to be a nightmare we need to wake up from. And we can also use our reason to understand the primacy and eternality of spiritual knowledge (13.12), thereby recognizing it to be eminently worthy of serious exploration.

Thus, the rational faculty can grant us initial intellectual impetus for exploring spiritual reality but the transformational facility of bhakti makes Krishna a living reality. The resulting experiential conviction can neither be obtained by rational argumentation nor be disturbed by doubts. 

Bhagavad Gita Chapter 09 Text 02

"This knowledge is the king of education, the most secret of all secrets. It is the purest knowledge, and because it gives direct perception of the self by realization, it is the perfection of religion. It is everlasting, and it is joyfully performed."